Friday, February 3, 2017

Aging, Memories, and The Application of Filters.

I have often chafed at nostalgia, the fond remembrance of days long past. There was no golden age of my life. I was an awful student, indifferent to the point of apathy. When I wasn't completely invisible it was because someone wanted to take the time to ridicule me. Teachers, in all fairness, tried to help me find the way, but it would have taken two, and they were flying solo. There is no animosity, these problems were self inflicted.

I have always relished being an outsider, sometimes it gets a little lonely. However, it is so much easier than holding up my end of a conversation. No matter what the topic sooner or later it will run dry and the circular references echoing front to back and side to side will have gone on for far too many minutes. Invariably fading to an uncomfortable, awkward silence. Eventually, without fail, I will stutter something vaguely rude, and just short of complete stupidity. And we will both walk away thinking "What the hell did that mean?"

Looking back it would be easy to think life was bleak, and nothing ever worked out quite right. Aging though, creates a sort of memory specific myopia. The farther back the gaze the better things look, or the less bad, anyway.

If I were to write the history of my life it would probably be represented as being a lot more interesting than it was. Sort of "alternative facts" for the sake of self respect.

Looking at it that way nostalgia makes perfect sense. Certainly things could not have always been this bad. And even if they were, or God forbid, if they were worse, well, memory can play tricks on people. Nostalgia is a local anastecia for the soul, or at least the sanity. If I remember myself as a sort of James Bond who was the first person to perform a successful heart transplant where is the harm?

What is the point of this? I don't really remember, I was too busy thinking about the time I stopped the evil villain from destroying the world, while calculating the largest prime number. Man, I was something.